The Syrian Battlefield Is Expanding And Neither Side Shows Signs Of Stopping

james_gordon_losangeles at http://www.flickr.com/search/?ss=2&w=79139277%40N08&q=aleppo+souq&m=text The war has spread to a fertile region east of Aleppo

WOMEN, their faces wrapped in scarves to protect them from the sun, bend over in the fields to pick cotton. Flocks of sheep kick up dust from tilled wheat fields, as young boys herd them along. Here in Raqqa province, east of Aleppo, life has gone on largely as normal for the last 19 months as the rest of Syria has descended into bloodshed. But since rebels seized the border town of Tal Abyad last month, the province has turned into a budding battleground.

"We are going to push down to the city of Raqqa, and this will weaken the regime's control of Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor," explains Abu Hassan, a member of the Raqqa Revolutionary Military Council, which is based in a pink-walled former school in Tal Abyad. Every day the rebels, led by the Farouq brigade, launch attacks. One night they destroy a regime checkpoint, the next they capture the loyalist owner of a petrol-station and his militia. And every day volleys of gunfire ring out as felled fighters and civilians killed by shelling are ferried back to wailing mothers and stoic fathers in their villages.

East of Aleppo, far from the main arterial roads used by the regime to resupply its forces, Raqqa province may appear to have little strategic importance. But it is crucial to the regime's survival, for it is part of the Jazeera region stretching across Raqqa into Hasaka and Deir ez-Zor in the east, which is Syria's breadbasket.

Sitting in a remote mud house, Nizar Hamza, the leader of a Bedouin rebel group, explains how his ragtag fighters try to guard the silos and fields and sometimes hustle sheep so the people can be fed. The local civilian council distributes harvested wheat. Yet for now the regime still controls much of the land. Lorries, accompanied by vehicles mounted with guns, and with helicopters overhead, easily pass through to get the grain.

In their battle for Raqqa, the opposition fighters face more than just the resistance of the regime. As everywhere else in the country, Raqqa's people have their own grievances. Here the Baathist regime confiscated land and redistributed it. Poverty is widespread. Drought pushed thousands off their land. The region's Kurds have long been sidelined. But protests have been small and few. Some locals have benefited from the regime. It won the loyalty of some tribes by currying their favour over many years and by paying off tribal leaders, while building up alternative sheikhs to weaken the control of the more obstreperous traditional leaders. Tribal authority has crumbled during the revolution in the past year, as members argue within the tribe over how best to react.

Fear abounds, too. "The security forces have always been so strong here that many people just don't believe Assad will go," says Mustafa Ahmad, a local village leader. Having seen the violence tearing nearby Aleppo apart, with Raqqa city now home to thousands of displaced people, many here on the vast swathes of bronzed, sun-parched land do not want the battle to be brought to their doorstep. "Bashar Assad is a dog, a murderer," says a mother of eight. "But we don't like the fighters either. We are tired and want peace."

Opposition leaders have little truck with these concerns, however. They are focused more on making pacts with other rebel groups than with mollifying the local civilians, and are pushing on down to add villages, towns and fields in Raqqa to the list of liberated areas. "Revolutions are messy," admits Abu Azzam, the local rebel commander, with a shrug. For Raqqa, things may get far messier yet.